It’s a law that many people have learned to live with – living both longer and healthier.

This month marks the fifth anniversary of the passage of the Smoke-Free Illinois Act, which prohibits smoking in virtually every workplace and indoor public space in the state. The law’s intent was to protect nonsmokers from exposure to secondhand smoke.

“We know that there is no safe level of exposure to secondhand smoke,” Jane Lux, DeKalb County Public Health Administrator, said. “Secondhand smoke is a mixture of the smoke given off by the burning end of tobacco products and the smoke exhaled from the lungs by smokers.”